The Beatles fly to the Bahamas to film Help!

The Beatles left London Airport on a chartered flight to the Bahamas to begin filming Help!, their second feature film.

Their Boeing 707 was seen off by 1,400 fans. The flight stopped in New York to refuel, but The Beatles’ party did not leave the aeroplane, although US Customs and Immigration wanted them to pass through customs.

Brandon De Wilde was an actor, a James Dean type. He liked The Beatles’ music and he heard we were going to film in the Bahamas, so he came over from the States with a big bag of reefer. We smoked on the plane, all the way to the Bahamas. It was a charter flight, with all the film people – the actors and the crew – and we thought, ‘No, nobody will notice.’ We had Mal smoking cigars to drown out the smell.

Upon their arrival in the Bahamas they held a swiftly-organised press conference at the airport. They then checked in to their suites at the Balmoral Club near Cable Beach, Nassau, and later enjoyed a midnight swim in the ocean.